The promise of 483 additional acute hospital beds contained in the HSE winter plan will not address the longstanding shortfall according to Nenagh GP Pat Harrold.
The plan unveiled by the Executive yesterday also includes the recruitment of over 12,000 people to help roll out the strategy.
While welcoming aspects of the proposals Dr Harrold feels the €600 million investment might not be adequate.
“They don’t really address our long term deficit and the fact that the population is getting bigger all the time there are more needs.”
“And if there is as expected a Covid surge it just mightn’t be enough – the IMO are concerned that there isn’t enough intensive care beds.”
“There’s 500 vacant consultant posts and I’m dealing with this every day with people saying ‘I’m waiting a year for this or two years for that’ even well before Covid.”
